Female friendship in eighteenth-century English literature [ Feelings & Emotions ]
… Commons, 1772. Résumé The English literature of the long eighteenth century offers abundant portraits of female friendship as a frequent form of sociability among women – sometimes sentimentalised as true spiritual companionship … pure and innocent souls, sometimes demonised as a devious façade for unnatural sexual desire. As opposed to men’s friendships, which centred on socialising in the public sphere, forms of attachment among women were associated with the … lives of the Ladies of Llangollen, or literary explorations of lesbian desire, fictional portraits of female friendship in the long eighteenth century seem to have provided women with the intellectual stimulus, the emotional …
Conflict | Friendship | Gender | Sex | Women
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